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heli-hiking

heli-hiking
 n.— «To be honest, the first day of your heli-hiking trip, run by a company called Canadian Mountain Holidays, entailed exactly zero hiking, but plenty in the way of massages, therapeutic mineral baths, romantic dinners, poolside drinks and other forms of holiday spoils.…Then, the next morning, on the bus ride with your fellow heli-hikers along the Trans-Canada Highway to Golden, you’ve stared out, agog, at the breathtaking mountain ranges.…Heli-hiking is the bastard child of heli-skiiing. The latter is a sport in which you ski down long, untouched mountain slopes.…The idea is that a helicopter drops the hikers (and a guide) off at the top of a mountain in the morning. Then they spend the rest of the day hiking in and around unimaginably beautiful country before being helicoptered back to the lodge, just in time for a late-afternoon dip in the pond and some predinner wine and cheese.» —“A helicopter, then a hike: Canada’s five-star wilderness” by Joe Nocera International Herald Tribune (Paris, France) Sept. 10, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

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